AsianCineFest

News and reviews, contemplations and considerations of Asian films and filmmakers. With the occasional piece on manga, dance, music, or whatever else Asian that might be of interest. Written by Dr. Stan Glick, a columnist for Asian Cult Cinema magazine.

A young woman, a motorcycle-riding youth, and an older man negotiate a strange and tensely romantic relationship in a film that is unusual in the Kadokawa lineup. Employing 1970s wildman director Toshiya Fujita (Lady Snowblood), Kadokawa Film continues to play with the fragments of U.S. pop culture while Fujita injects a playfully stylized realism. The film continued Haruki Kadokawa's new strategy of using more auteur-minded directors that had no qualms about working in genre film. Atsuko Asano created a stir for her embodiment of a young woman not willing to be bound by conventions and intent on negotiating new forms of relationships.

SYNOPSIS: Keima Katsuragi's skill at winning women's hearts is so legendary that he's called The God Of Conquests, but that's only in dating video games, not the real world. Suddenly, Keima's life takes a turn for the weird when he answers what he thinks is an online gaming challenge. Instead, he ends up with a demon contract, and now he has to help perky demon hunter Elsie track down a bunch of demons that have escaped from hell! The reason: the demons have hidden themselves within the hearts of a group of random girls, and the only way to get them out is if Keima can make the girls fall in love with him. Also, just to make sure that Keima is properly incentivized, his failure will result in the loss of something important: his head! Hopefully, the tricks Keima's mastered with virtual girls will work just as well with live ones. Otherwise, things are going to get really messy in the spectacular ultimate collection of THE WORLD GOD ONLY KNOWS!

SYNOPSIS: Shotaro Tatewaki knows that Sakurako Kujo isn't a normal person. After all, most young women have multiple interests revolving around things like work, fashion, and sports, but Sakurako is fixated on just one thing: bones. While she already has a huge collection of them, mostly animal, she's always trying to gather more, especially those of the human variety. This can be quite a problem for Shotaro: especially since he and Sakurako have a positively unnatural aptitude for discovering dead bodies together. Fortunately, Sakurako is a naturally brilliant detective who unearths the mystery of what happened to the owners of those bones, but it's up to Shotaro to make apologies for Sakurako's odd quirks and tendency to make off with the evidence. It's a grave business that can leave him literally bone-tired, but for the wheels of justice to turn, there are always more skeletons to be bared and new secrets to be exhumed in BEAUTIFUL BONES - SAKURAKO'S INVESTIGATION -.

SYNOPSIS: There are probably worse things that could have happened to Ichika Orimura than being the only guy in a training academy filled with military hardware and several battalions of highly competitive and extremely boy-crazed teenage girls. And being caught in a five-girl crossfire between his obsessive childhood friends Lingyin and Houki and the even more zealous British, German and French pilots Cecillia, Laura and Charlotte, at least turned out to be survivable. But surely, Ichika's finally put all his female troubles behind him, right? Oh don't be ridiculous. None of the femmes fatales in his life have canceled their conquest scenarios; there's double trouble arriving in the form of the Sarashiki sisters; the rest of the school is still waiting in line to take their shot; and when a whole new set of female pilots working for the bad guys shows up with a new generation of stolen IS hardware, things are about to get utterly lethal! The mayhem continues, the mecha runs amok, the hormones run wild and the maiden's behavior becomes even less maidenly as Ichika gets schooled for a second spectacular semester in INFINITE STRATOS 2!

SYNOPSIS: Our society is infected with a disease, a gangrenous cancer in the form of those who commit the most monstrous of evils, yet whose power and influence place them beyond the reach of the law. When corrupt politicians fail to act and the police seem helpless, there is a third, secret option that stands ready to excise the malignancy in a tactical surgical strike: Black Label, a dedicated team of doctors, nurses, and students who moonlight as an elite team of assassins. With the world's deadliest nurse, a master swordswoman MD, an idol with an affinity for explosives, and a pair of seemingly indestructible high school students, their mission is as simple as it is deadly: identify the drug runners, terrorists, and criminal masterminds who can't be destroyed any other way, and then eliminate them by whatever means necessary in TRIAGE X!

SYNOPSIS: Illyasviel von Einzbern's life has become ridiculously complicated since the Kaleidostick Ruby convinced her to become a magical girl and join the quest for collecting the seven Class Cards. Since then, almost every day has brought a new surprise, from gaining new friends and partners like Miyu Edelfelt, to encountering her own magical twin! One would think Illya deserves a little time off, right? No such luck: a trip to the beach quickly turns into a magical quest, and Illya finds herself caught in a string of magical feuds, encounters with love potions, an excursion into the world of "boys love" comics (plus the women who read them), and half a dozen other delirious diversions. However, that's only the warm-up for what might be her final mission: recovering the long-lost Eighth Card! It's a mystical whirlwind of unexpected escapades and surprising new revelations as Illya's saga continues in FATE/KALEID LINER PRISMA ILLYA 2WEI! HERZ!

By far the most expensive film ever made in Japan at the time, the apocalyptic blockbuster Virus was Kadokawa's most widely distributed film outside of Japan. Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale, Battles Without Honor and Humanity) directs this spectacular story of the struggle for survival of a team of international scientists in the Antarctic after a virus has wiped out the rest of humanity and set off a nuclear countdown. The apex of the Kadokawa blockbuster strategy, Virus was rolled out with a massive advertising campaign. Both gripping and campy, the film signaled the end of Haruki Kadokawa's quest for ever bigger films and his re-orientation towards pop experimentalism and idol stars.

Action star Yusaku Matsuda started his journey towards melding arthouse film and pop in this mesmerizingly stylized and Nietzschean heist film about a war reporter planning to rob a bank. Scriptwriter Shoichi Maruyama became an overnight sensation for his unique mix of the surreal and hard-boiled realism. Haruki Kadokawa used the film to embark on a new kind of small-scale blockbuster that emphasized artistic freedom. Though based on a bestseller by Haruhiko Oyabu, Kadokawa told Maruyama: "All I want is the novel's title and your modern sensibility." Foreshadowing the self-reflexive play of Japan's bubble era, the film tackles the insecurities of an increasingly international Japan. New 4k restoration!

18+. This film is unrated, but may only be viewed by persons 18 years of age and older.

One of the defining films of 1980s Japanese cinema, Sailor Suit and Machine Gun shows pop idol/actress Hiroko Yakushimaru and director Shinji Somai at the peak of their powers through the story of a schoolgirl who becomes the head of a yakuza group and takes on a sinister drug cartel. Somai uses the pulpy premise to design fascinatingly orchestrated and downright wacky long takes that explore the meaning of postmodern Japan's image culture. For Kadokawa Film it was one of the defining successes of their idol strategy, creating cypher-like media personas that were like nothing that came before.

About Me

I became seriously interested in Asian films in the mid-90s after reading SEX AND ZEN & A BULLET IN THE HEAD My first Asian film review, on TOKYO BLUE CASE 1, starring the delectable Keiko Shiratori, appeared in ASIAN CULT CINEMA magazine in 2000. I became a columnist about a year later, a position that I held until ASIAN CULT CINEMA ceased publication at the end of 2009.
Meanwhile, I began my own blog, AsianCineFest, at the end of June 2006. Living in New York, I have covered many of the festivals and film series there over the years, and have also interviewed several Asian film directors, actors, and actresses, including Lee Chang-dong, Tsui Hark, Joe Shishido, and Sora Aoi.
In 2011, I became associated with the VCinema Podcast and Blog when I contributed articles about and helped coordinate coverage of that year’s New York Asian Film Festival and Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film. I've been a co-host of the VCinema Podcast starting with Episode 35: Exte.
Email: asiancinefest@gmail.com